TITLE: The Soldier Was 'Tired'

AUTHOR: Gideon Levy

PUB: Ha'aretz

DATE: January 14, 2001

Take note what is happening in the Israel Defense Forces: While the Chief of Staff is incredibly busy with heaping criticism on Clinton's proposals, with warning against leaving the Jordan Valley and with verbally attacking the Palestinian Authority and its leader - his attention to what is happening to his own soldiers is continually slipping. You won't hear a word about this from Mofaz himself, nor from his generals.The message conveyed by the IDF's top brass to the ranks is sometimes even more drastic than it was during the previous Intifada: The policy is to ease the instructions on opening fire, together with a wink of understanding and silence, and above all, the number of investigations and courts martial is disgracefully tiny. If we are to judge according to the number of recent investigations and the IDF's response to them, it can be said that in fact soldiers are allowed to shoot in the territories at anything that moves, so long as the moving target is a Palestinian. (Only preferably not at a journalist: on one occasion, the Chief of Staff ordered that an officer and soldier be court martialed - after a photographer from AP was shot and wounded.) At least, in the previous Intifada, the IDF's declared policy was that every case of a Palestinian being killed was to be investigated by the Military Police. This policy no longer exists. Despite the fact the some 300 Palestinians have been killed, 81 of them minors, and two women and a child just at the end of last week - according to the military spokesman, the Military Police has only opened five investigations on soldiers' illegal use of firearms. The significance of this is that soldiers can now shoot at innocent Palestinians and there will be no investigation, let alone a trial. The conclusions drawn by the soldiers are clear and the results are seen in the field. They are bad for the IDF and, of course, bad for the Palestinians and bad for Israel. Last Sunday I was in a Palestinian car traveling in the fields between Beit Furik and Beit Dajan, near Nablus. I witnessed the fear of the Palestinian passengers, whom the army blockades in their villages by means of concrete blocks and mounds of earth, so that their sick, their workers and their school pupils are forced to be ferried out on dirt roads and through the mud. I couldn't understand why those in the car were so frightened. After all, they were traveling home. Fifteen minutes after I passed along these roads - that made me think of the "Burma Road" that broke a way through to besieged Jerusalem during the War of Independence - Fatma Abu Jish was shot to death at the same spot. She was 42-years-old and had just come off her shift as a clerk in the Nablus hospital. She was with her sister and brother-in-law in their old Fiat car, on the way home to Beit Dajan. Abu Jish was the sole support for her large family and she was traveling on a dirt road. How else could she get home? The soldier shot her from a distance, and the bullet penetrated her heart. He said he was aiming at the wheels. But why on earth did he open fire at the car anyway? Because he knew it is allowed. Because he knew that no unpleasant punishment was in store for him. Because he knew that Palestinian lives have no value. Whoever has allowed shooting day after day at the tires of Palestinian cars, whose wretched drivers have to traverse dirt roads, or has ignored the fact that this phenomenon exists, should not be amazed that a soldier at the Beit Dajan roadblock should shoot with such unbearable lightness at Fatma Abu Jish. Evidence is being kept in the office of the B'Tselem human rights organization from a soldier in the reserves who describes the phenomenon of shooting at tires as a routine activity. This evidence only reinforces the testimonies of many Palestinians that the tires of their cars were punctured ("including the spare tire," they emphasized beside the besieged village of Beit Furik). Other evidence by this reserve soldier, about soldiers of the Orchid Company of the Military Police shooting at the head of a Palestinian man riding his donkey near to the settlement of Beit Hagai, makes one shudder. "I'm positive that this shooting was intended to injure," the soldier testified (the B'Tselem office has his name). As far as is known, the IDF has not investigated the incident. The woman passenger in the car and the man riding the donkey have not been the only needless victims of soldiers. In Hebron, Jedalla al-Jabari, 50, was shot in the legs and left bleeding for a long time on the road, until pictures of the atrocity were published worldwide; Mohammed Ata, 19, was shot at the Halhul roadblock when his wrists were already handcuffed; Arig al-Jabari, 20, was shot to death on the roof of her home in Hebron; Abed al-Azia, 58, was killed inside his home in the Abu Snina neighborhood of the same city; the child Omar Faroun Khaled, 10, was shot last week at the Ayosh Junction. All these, and others, were victims of soldiers for whom shooting is all too easy and of commanders for whom court martialing the soldiers is too difficult. In the IDF they usually find excuses for the light trigger finger, citing reasons such as the soldiers' "burn-out" and "tiredness." What's the connection? Why should a soldier's tiredness find expression in easy shooting? Israel cannot make an outcry all over the globe about the terror harming its citizens, while its soldiers are killing innocent Palestinians and do not have to justify their actions. Until every single soldier hears from his commanders that the life of a Palestinian is just as precious as his own, and until the IDF does not court martial those who shoot needlessly - this ghastly phenomenon will continue. END top